As an author they tell you to write everyday, but you need to expand your writing beyond your novel if you want success.

The more you write — the more you write, simple as that. Pulling out your laptop and hacking away at the plot of your novel everyday will turn it into an automatic routine. I’m sure you’ve heard this many times over, practice makes perfect and all that jazz. Stephen King iconized this writing tip in his novel “On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft”,

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”— On Writing, Stephen King

Absolutely write for your novel each day, as well as read books each day, but expand your horizons too. There are many types of writing beyond creative, and if would do you well to practice them all. The ability to write good copy for an Instagram post is crucial to an author’s success, or any social media post for that matter.

Instagram now has 1 BILLION USERS

That’s a massive amount of people you could be sharing your work with. If you’re working on a novel right now, you need to be building your social media presence. The more followers you have on your Instagram account before you launch your novel, the more people you have to invite to participate in your book launch.

You rip your soul out finishing your book, now you have your ideal audience primed to hear about your new novel.

Heaps of people have used Instagram to help build their business to a successful one, so why not writers? Gary Vaynerchuk is a huge proponent of jumping on the social media bandwagon. He used YouTube to catapult himself to success, he took every opportunity to test out new social media avenues to use to his advantage.

When I first started my website I wasn’t sold on whether I needed to have an Instagram account. I knew I needed a Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Pinterest account, but how could I leverage Instagram as a writer? I read Gary Vee’s book “Crushin’ It”, and it flipped my thoughts 360 degrees.

“Engaging with customers and involving them in the development of [your] brand would pay dividends no matter what [you] sold.”

— Crushin’ It, Gary Vaynerchuk

My whole purpose of writing a novel is to bring enjoyment to people, the same enjoyment I have enjoyed from the many books I’ve read over the years. Writers may lean towards a more lonely life, but we shouldn’t, we need to get out there and be engaged with our community. Can you imagine the launch of your book with a total of 100 social media followers, opposed to 5000?

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.”

— On Writing, Stephen King

Take Stephen King’s advice a step further, and apply it to social media. Write your novel with the door closed, write your social content with the door open. Share yourself with the world before you share your work, you’re more interesting than you think. We’ve all researched our favourite authors, directors, musicians, etc…but why not jump the gun, and show people a slice of yourself before they’ve seen your creations?

Show people what you have to offer, give them value.

Download Instagram, and start yourself an author account. Right now, go do it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing right now, you can figure it out as you go. Read Gary’s book, Crushin’ It, and you will learn some tools of the trade to set yourself up right. You don’t have to be an amazing photographer to make an Instagram account that attracts followers, and provides value to your audience.

I agree with you, Instagram has been one of the best platforms for me in building my brand. I’m still starting out and trying to figure out my style, but I agree that’s something you can find and grow along the way. I learned my lesson with Youtube. It’s better to just get started. The longer you wait, that just means others are in there gaining momentum that you could’ve had if you’d just jumped in despite the fear. And who doesn’t love taking pretty pictures? 🙂

I am part of Teachers Pay Teachers (teacher-authors) and they pushed us-all to use Instagram. I tried, failed. Too much time! I do know lots of people who swear by it. I’ve always wondered how authors would use it so this is useful.

I’m developing a course right now to educate people on instagram. Provide them the tools they need to boost their brand, and drive traffic to their website. I’m glad this post provided some insight, thank you for reading 🙂

I’ve actually just started trying Instagram. So far my intent is to try and post a brief piece (including an appropriate image) whenever I put up a new blog post on my main site. Beyond that, time will tell.
On the one hand I understand the importance of social media and an online presence. On the other though, I think it’s very easy to let things like social media grow to overshadow what should be the center of it all, writing stories.
Granted, my goals include turning writing into a source of income, and that does mean a certain amount of online presence and networking/connecting, but yeah, for the time being I believe in maintaining a certain amount of time management/budgeting, and only allocating approximately 20% of writing time to social media. But as with all things, that’s a work in progress, and in time I may reevaluate.
In any case, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Look forward to checking out your workshop/class when it’s completed.

The focus should always be on the novel first, most definitely. If you aren’t writing your book, then you have nothing to market on Instagram anyways, so it would be fruitless. Thank you for sharing your opinion, it’s very important to manage your time effectively and I appreciate your stance. 🙂